Automatic soft padding running on the TiVo (new version)

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Thanks - the logs are all there - looks like I was setting the manual recordings too soon so Endpad wasn't waking up in time to process them.

I'll stick their kit back together and hope it all works out later on!

FWIW I'd thought that rediecting the output to /dev/null would kill the logs, had no idea that it wrote to /var/log so maybe worth a quick note in the readme - which I did read, honest! Yes I had tried running it by hand too, and it seemed to sit there quietly but the setup here means I have to unplug & move the Tivo to be next to the PC so I couldn't correlate events as they happened anyway.

Thanks again for the speedy response!

Keith

 

Okay.
Just got my Tivo networked and I really want to install Endpad.
I have read through the forum and I am slowly getting my head around this.
A few questions if I may - hopefully they will make sense.
Taking Erics' config file as an example

s 1 e 4 f 1
p Jools n 19
p Pops n 2

If there is nothing before or after 'Jools' - what time will it start and finish(i.e 19 minutes into the program or 1 minute before it should normally start and what about the finish )?
If 'Pops' is immediately after 'Jools' will it run 19 minutes over and again when will it finish (is this a scenario for maxneg to stop 'Pops' starting too late)?
Is there a priority in the order of the config file ('Pops' over 'Jools')?
Will this apply to all scheduled recordings i.e season passes, wishlists, Tivo's own suggestions (anything in todo)?
What is a manual recording?

Not sure if I am sounding dumb and I realise that I need to install it and see - but if I miss Corrie... well you know the story.

 

The Jools recording will have 1 minute's Start Padding, 4 minutes' endpadding.

The Jools recording will be extended 19 minutes into the Pops recording, which will start 19 minutes late. The Pops recording will be extended by 4 minutes as per global padding. I believe you could use maxneg to change the Pops start time.

No, I don't think so.

I believe it matches on the ToDo List; global settings affect Suggestions, I suppose matching Suggestions...
<Comes back after checking Now Playing>
Yes. Matching Suggestions are affected.

In my endpad.config I have
c BBCR4FM -s 0 -e 2
Recorded half hour Suggestions on Radio 4 are 32 minutes long.

 

Thanks Eric - getting there.

If I could just ask a couple more (based on your answers)

You say

Is that with or without the 19 minutes i.e it starts 18 minutes later and finishes 23 minutes later than scheduled.

and

Does the 'Pops' recording then just run 2 minutes over (into the next) if there is a following program.

Sorry if I may be going over old ground.

(Could negative padding be seen more as an offset where Endpad 'slides across' the scheduled recording by 'n' minutes?)

I will hopefully install tonight and try some tests.

 

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As discussed earlier in the thread, negpad is poorly named. What it does is extend the finish of the programme into the start of the next programme if there is one; if there isn't one, it has no effect.

So if you had an hour long Jools followed by a half hour Pops,
Jools would have a 1 hour 20 minute duration, with 1 minute's Start Padding, 19 minutes Endpadding, and Pops would have a duration of 15 minutes, starting 19 minutes late and having 4 minutes Endpadding.

Yes, if there is one; if there isn't one, the global setting of 4 minutes applies.

It could. But remember it has no effect on the start time of the named proramme.

 

Killer lines.
Seems clearer now.

Why do you have 'n19' in your config file for 'Jools'?
If there is no following program then it will stop recording after 4 minutes, whereas if there is a recording following that will be truncated by 19 minutes and Jools will be an extra 15 minutes longer (over the standard endpad 4)?

Thanks for all the help so far - very much appreciated.

 

You're right (see, you do understand! ).

I wrote that before I understood negpad.
Now I have
p Jools -n 19 -e 19
Having Later with Jools Holland in one recording is more important to me than any following programme.

 

I have had a series of failed recordings tonight, due to endpad.
Here is the full uncommented section of endpad.config
s 1 e 4 f 1
# p Jools -n 19 -e 19
# p "Doctor Who" -e 9
p Click -s 0 -e 0
c BBCR4FM -s 0 -e 2
p Countryfile -e 2
p "Daily Show" -s 0 -e 0
c BBC2 -n 1
the last line being the most relevant in this case, negpad on BBC2.

Here is the To Do List before endpad changed it
Thu 17th Aug 19:00 BBC2 Seven Man-Made Wonders
Thu 17th Aug 19:30 BBC2 Mythbusters
Thu 17th Aug 20:00 BBC2 Dragons' Den
Thu 17th Aug 21:00 ITV1ANG Bad Girls

I spotted that Dragons' Den hadn't started to record, went to LiveTV to hit the Record button:
I didn't spot that Bad Girls hadn't started to record, so when I finally did, I checked Recording History to see that the scheduled episodes, on the hour, were conflicting with the previous programme, and the new showing, created by endpad to start at one minute past, was "no longer in program guide".

Here is the relevant section of endpad.log
Thursday 18:55:00 : Woken up
Thursday 18:55:00 : Recording Mythbusters on BBC2 now
Thursday 18:55:00 : Recording Scheduled End Time: 19:00
Thursday 18:55:00 : Next recording is {Dragons' Den} on BBC2 at 19:00
Thursday 18:55:00 : Current recording (Mythbusters at 18:31 on Thu) is on BBC2 so use negpad 1
Thursday 18:55:00 : Gap to next programme is 0 seconds
Thursday 18:55:00 : Need to add 60 seconds of negative padding to {Dragons' Den}
Thursday 18:55:00 : Original start time for {Dragons' Den} is 68400
Thursday 18:55:00 : New start time is 68460
Thursday 18:55:01 : Cancelled old recording
Thursday 18:55:01 : Creating Recording...
Thursday 18:55:01 : Creating Showing...
Thursday 18:55:01 : Done.
Thursday 18:55:01 : Gap to next programme is now 60 seconds
Thursday 18:55:01 : Added 60 seconds end padding to Mythbusters on BBC2
Thursday 18:55:01 : Next end padding setting due 19:55
Thursday 18:55:01 : Not time to add start padding yet
Thursday 18:55:01 : Next start padding setting due 18:59
Thursday 18:55:01 : Next wake up will be 18:59
Sleeping, checking every minute for kill signal.....
Thursday 18:59:00 : Woken up
Thursday 18:59:00 : Recording Mythbusters on BBC2 now
Thursday 18:59:00 : Recording Scheduled End Time: 19:01
Thursday 18:59:00 : Next recording is {The Daily Show with Jon Stewart} on MORE4 at 19:30

So endpad cancelled the "Next recording is {Dragons' Den} on BBC2 at 19:00" (GMT); supposedly created a recording for 19:01 which for some reason got removed from the To Do list.

Is it too dangerous to set negpad on an entire channel?

Any ideas on how to fix this?

Any help on this gratefully received.

[Edit] I've noticed that this is the same problem that Fozzie had in April.

 

Interesting one.

I haven't looked at that bit of code, but it looks likely to me that the fake Showing object created by Endpad is being recognised as such by the TiVos housekeeping as it does not correspond to anything in the Schdule and so removed. You probably get away with it 9 times out of 10 as the houskeeping is unlikely to run in the few minutes between the fake Showing being set up and it starting.

If that is the problem, the solution would be for the new late starting show to be created as fully manual timed recording. It would howver then be divorced from its season pass.

 

I just refreshed the endpad config file and, sure enough, in the endpad log it says "Thursday 19:19:03 : Reloading config file due to file change". Is it also supposed to echo the new config file settings? If so, it hasn't done that

Also, I just noticed that it has stopped waking up

Arrggh - It died!

This is what I added to the config:

programme apprentic* 15 # pad all Apprentices 15 minutes....

Should I have quoted the program string, like THIS

programme "apprentic*" 15 # pad all Apprentices 15 minutes....

????

In the config, it just says '(may be quoted using {} or "").' - it doesn't say you HAVE to

 

Doh!

It should have been

programme "apprentic*" endpad 15 # pad all Apprentices 15 minutes....

of course

Sorry (but it's a shame a simple config error killed endpad....... Hint Hint)

 

Hmmmm

I have the following line in endpad.config

programme "*apprentic*" endpad 15 # pad all Apprentices 15 minutes....

Now endpad crashes with

Thursday 19:48:26 : Woken up
Thursday 19:48:26 : No recording in progress
Thursday 19:48:26 : Next recording is {The Apprentice} on BBC2EM at 22:50
Thursday 19:48:26 : Error detected
Thursday 19:48:26 : couldn't compile regular expression pattern: ?+* follows nothing
while executing
"regexp -nocase -- $newopt(program) $program "
(procedure "getConfig" line 32)
invoked from within
"getConfig "" $cdate $ctime $ctitle "Current recording" {endpad sugeq negpad forceneg}"
(procedure "setConfig" line 4)
invoked from within
"setConfig $ccallsign $ncallsign $cstartdate $nstartdate $cstarttime $nstarttime $ctitle $ntitle"
Thursday 19:48:26 : Attempting to recover
Thursday 19:48:56 : Woken up

Eventually it dies with "Too many errors, stopping"

I asume I have specified the pattern for the programme title incorrectly..... What should I have specified to be able to match "Apprentice", "The Apprentice", "The Apprentice US" etc???

Hmmm

Been reading this thread whilst restarting endpad, and it seems that the program name does not have to be an EXACT match, just ANY match - is that right

So "Apprentice" will match all the above without having to resort to wildcards/patterns??

 

Being a complete linux ignoramus, can anybody help me with the problem I am getting trying to make endpad start automatically. I have put
/var/hack/endpad.tcl -config endpad.config -auto >> /dev/null &
into the last line in rc.sysinit.author within /etc/rc.d/
endpad.config is in /var/hack/
After Tivo has booted I see the message (in kernal.log)

couldn't open "endpad.config": no such file or directory

And then various messages indicating that endpad hasn't started.
If I then start endpad manually via telnet within /VAR/HACK/ using ./endpad.tcl -config endpad.config
then endpad starts successfully and picks up the parameters correctly and starts applying the start and end padding I requested. I have checked the parms but just can't see what I am doing wrong.

 

Great stuff. Removing the -config parameter altogether, as you suggested, does the trick nicely and everything starts up correctly. Thanks.

 

I have a pre-newbie question (i.e. I haven't installed Endpad yet): I would like to forcibly add an extra 5 minutes to the end of every programme (i.e. regardless of clashes), except where a scheduled recording immediately follows it on the same channel. Is this possible with Endpad?

 

Yes that's just how Enpad works. It will add on how much you want as long as nothing is scheduled afterwards.
You can also get it to do the same for the beginning of a program.

 

Wow, I've been using Endpad for a very long time now but I had no idea it was so configurable. Should have RTFM I guess! I had no idea it could be configured to work differently on different channels and even pinpoint specific programmes for different treatment!

Good show.